As beginnings go, Ciara Alice Brady’s was pretty inauspicious. Hope gave birth to her daughter in the abandoned warehouse in which she was being kept by abductor/supposed babydaddy Patrick Lockhart. Wait, if he was the father, why had he kidnapped his lover? Simple. Hope, as she had a tendency to do, was reuniting with her one and only, Bo, so Patrick, in a fit of pique, had gone to extremes, by not only having the paternity test doctored but sequestering the object of his obsession to refocus her attention on him.
2009: The Fine Line Between a Kid Napping and a Kidnapping
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
Having been born to trouble magnets Bo and Hope, it should have come as a surprise to no one that Ciara was abducted before her age was even in the double digits. Among the culprits was a corrupt Salem PD officer, who — irony alert! — was assigned to the case. When he figured out that his crime was likelier to get him featured in a mug shot than an Employee of the Month portrait, he killed his cohorts and tried to play the hero who’d rescued the tyke. It might’ve worked, too, had a traumatized Ciara not realized who he really was and been rescued by Bo before the villain could keep her from tattling.
2013: Growing Pains
Image Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
After Bo and Hope split up, their daughter — only marginally more perturbed than fans — seemed determined to turn The Bad Seed into a one-kiddo show. To that end, Ciara stole from a teacher, shredded clothes belonging to Bo’s girlfriend, Carly (and they weren’t even last year’s fashions!), and rebranded herself as her school’s bully. (“A” for audacity?) On the plus side, when Ciara targeted classmate Chase Jennings for abuse, it brought into Mom’s life the boy’s handsome dad, Aiden.
2015: Truth or Consequences
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
We thought that Ciara had been dark during her Bad Seed phase. You did, too, right? We were wrong. So were you. And, as if to prove to us all that we hadn’t seen nothin’ yet, the teenager — with the help of Theo Carver, Joey Johnson and Claire Brady — made a hostage of Chase until he admitted that he had raped her. OK, wow. And we thought that Ciara was dark. Nope. Chase was dark. The kind of dark that you only see when you’re wearing a blindfold. At night. In a closet. With the light off.
2015: Love’s Labors Lost in Translation
Image Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
After the “death” of Abigail DiMera, Ciara moved in with a grieving Chad to help care for the couple’s son, Thomas. By which we mean totally ignore a smitten Theo in favor of crushing on her boss. Despite what’s suggested by this particular photo, Chad kept Ciara at arm’s length. But by the time she realized that “Oh, Theo’s awfully cute — and actually into me!” he’d transferred his affections to Claire. Finally, after Ciara learned that new boo Wyatt Stone had been getting tips on wooing her from Theo, she got the hell outta Dodge — well, Salem — to chill overseas for a while.
2017: Cool Rider
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
When Ciara returned, she did so as the ultimate daddy’s girl — at least if one’s daddy is Bo Brady! Clad in leather and riding a Harley, she roared into Salem, declared her feelings for Theo (who by then was in love with Claire), flirted with Tripp Dalton (who also just happened to be in love with Claire; it was a really good time to be Claire!) and feuded with… well, obviously, Claire. (Needless to say, Ciara stopped slipping $5 bills in her niece’s birthday cards for a spell.)
2018: Twist of Fate
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
Distraught after admitting to Tripp that she’d been raped by Chase years earlier, Ciara raced off on her motorcycle, only to get into an accident and be “rescued” by… ack! The Necktie Killer! Ben! Before you could say, “Oh, gee, maybe you could have just left me with the roadkill,” he was hallucinating, she was tied to a bed in a remote cabin, and that cabin had caught fire. Obviously, the two of them were destined to fall madly in love.
2019: Four’s Company
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
After Ciara and Tripp got together, Ben — with Claire’s blessing, it bears mentioning — moved into the loft. Ciara tried her darnedest to resist temptation, but after finding out that Tripp had been responsible for getting Ben arrested — and seeing him rocking little more than a towel over and over again — she ditched her beau for the supposed psycho among them. (If she’d only known then what Claire was capable of!)
2019: Caged Heat
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
Following Days of our Lives’ one-year time jump, Ciara found herself separated from Ben by prison bars. Owing to his history of weaponizing neckwear, he’d been tossed in the pokey for supposedly throttling sis Jordan to death. (And how’s this for irony? His cellmate was one of his “victims,” Will Horton, under the mistaken impression that he was responsible for the demise of his mother-in-law! But we digress… ) Were it not for Ciara’s Herculean efforts, her honey might have succumbed to the lethal injection that he received before Jordan’s babydaddy, Christian Maddox, was revealed to be the real culprit.
2020: Till Death Do Us Part
Image Credit: XJ Johnson/JPI
Pretty much every obstacle ever conceived by a soap opera was thrown at “Cin,” from Tripp’s abs to familial objections to Ben’s aforementioned stint on Death Row. Yet the couple managed to overcome every one of them to make it all the way to their wedding day. It should have been smooth sailing for the sweethearts at that point. They both had jobs, they were as into each other as ever two people were, and yet… kaboom!
2021: Three’s a Crowd
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
Thanks to Ciara and Ben’s psychic connection, he was able to rescue her after she was presumed dead (ha) and passed from one kidnapper to another like they were playing hot potato. Unfortunately, yet another explosion left her with no memory of her husband… other than that he’d been the Necktie Killer. So she divorced him quicker than you can spell D-I-V… Oh, already done? Yes, she did it that quickly and got engaged to old flame Theo Carver.
2021: The Devil Ya Say
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
Even after Ciara regained her memory and returned to Ben’s arms, more heartache was in store for the twosome. For starters, their Christmas tree was as sparsely decorated as Charlie Brown’s before its makeover. And on top of that, Satan, unaware of our disdain for needless remakes, decided to cast the lovers in a new version of Rosemary’s Baby.
2022: ‘Sea’ Ya Later
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
While Ciara was in labor with baby Bo, she was kidnapped once more, this time by a possessed Allie Horton. Understandably, as soon as Satan was told in no uncertain terms to go to hell, the new mom and Ben decided that maybe, just maybe it was time to put Salem in rearview. So they bought Bo a teensy captain’s hat and turned the Living in Cin into their own personal love boat.
